Posts tagged fsbo

Congratulations on taking the first step towards selling your home on your own: Using Buy Owner!

As the nation’s leading FSBO company, Buy Owner offers the strength and stability of an established company, as well as the hallmark of being the most popular FSBO destination online, delivering over 10 million page views per month.

Now that your ad is live, your home benefits from exposure to potential buyers through Buy Owner’s ultra-aggressive advertising campaign that includes:

An aggressively advertised toll-free number (800-771-7777)

Our constantly visited website, BuyOwner.com

Buy Owner Magazine

These resources do the hard work of getting your property exposed and marketed, so that you can get it sold!

While you’re selling with Buy Owner, you can improve your chances of selling by putting a little legwork into your sale. Check out these helpful tips from previous Buy Owner Blog articles!

“Schedule an open house on a weekend afternoon when not a lot of community events are happening. Hint: don’t plan the open house on the day of a big football game or the weekend of a holiday.” 25 Extra Tricks for Drawing Buyers

“By cleaning, decluttering and repairing your home, you set it ahead of the pack, and you make it easier for buyers to imagine themselves inside.” (from “Beating the Market: How to Sell Now!“)

“If there’s one keyword to keep in mind when you’re planning a home showing, it’s this: detail…When you prepare for a home showing, you’re preparing your home in a very similar way. Just like your vehicle needs to smell good, look good, be in absolute mint condition, so should your home be when potential buyers come to call.” (from “The Key to Showing Well: Detailing”)

“When done right, curb appeal has the power to pull potential buyers in, implying that the interior of your home will be just as impressive as the façade.” (from “8 Ways to Improve Curb Appeal“)

If your home has been on the market since the cold, inactive months of winter real estate, now is the time to step it up. Warm spring weather tends to reactive the real estate market and adds numerous new home sellers to the market, causing your home to fall to the bottom of the pile. Home buyers are also most active in the coming months, and they are interested in the new rather than the old. What can you do to reestablish interest in your home? Here are five starting tips:

Add a significant upgrade or minor upgrades to your home. A major upgrade could include adding an Energy Star refrigerator, repainting your entire exterior or interior, upgrading your countertops to granite or replacing old carpeting with hardwood flooring. Minor upgrades could include adding a new front door, repainting the deck or adding a keypad entry to the garage. Then, have your advertisement updated with these new improvements.

Redecorate. It’s the perfect way to spend your spare time while waiting for interested home buyers. That way, when you do host an open house or show the house to potential buyers, you can rave about the contemporary colors of paint you added. Or, you can remain silent and just allow the buyers to breathe in the scent of the spring flowers on the table.

Include an item with your home sale to perk more interest. While keeping the price the same, update your advertisements to say that you will leave your rider lawn mower, your chic chandelier, your designer curtains or your vintage rug. If you’re really desperate to sell, you could even offer the home fully furnished.

Keep the outside of your house looking immaculate. Try mowing your lawn diagonally for visual appeal and to make the yard appear larger. Trim the edges of the lawn along the driveway and walkway. Trim all the trees and bushes, rake the yard and pull weeds from the gardens. If the outside of the house looks appealing, potential home buyers will want to see the inside.

These tips will get you well on your way to gaining potential home buyer interest!

True, there are a lot of incentives towards buying NOW. But, as reporter Beth Braverman points out, “[B]uying right now is not a no-brainer. In some areas home prices may fall further. If you own a house now, it may take longer than you expect to sell it, and you may walk away with less cash than you thought.”

To consider these and other points, head over to the full article at CNN Money!

Is the land the best part? Then clear out brush, clean up sheds, mow the lawn, trim the bushes. Are the brand-new hardwood floors the hot feature? Then get them in shining, gleaming condition and place furniture in such a way that the floors get noticed (i.e., don’t let them be so cluttered that you can’t see anything!).

The key is: Make the most of what your home has got.

Think about the bedrooms.

Many times, in a home with three or more bedrooms, one bedroom might be used as an office or a workout room or for storage or something else. That’s convenient for you, and while you’ve been the one living there, that’s all that matters. But now you want to sell. And if you’re advertising your home as having four bedrooms, make it look like there are four bedrooms, with a bed in each.

You’re selling now, so it’s about playing up your home’s features.

Along those lines, your bedrooms should be clean, spotless, free of clutter and freshly vacuumed or swept. Don’t overlook the closets; buyers will be free to open them and have a look inside. The more empty space they see, the easier it will be for them to imagine their own belongings inside.

When you are selling your home, why waste time going between agents and lawyers? No one knows your home as good as you do, so who better to speak directly to the buyer than you?

Buy Owner cuts out all the people in between and allows the buyer to come directly to you with questions, concerns and offers! When you list your property, you may post contact information so potential buyers are able to speak to you directly. Schedule an open house, chat about carpet allowance, negotiate price. U can do it all using Buy Owner!

If you’re settling in on the perfect New Year’s resolution for 2010, make it this one: to buy your next home with Buy Owner! By doing so, you will be choosing the simplest, quickest method of finding the home of your dreams, you will be completely in charge of your own search and, on top of all that, you will be doing it with the tools right at your fingertips!

When you’re ready to start browsing properties, you can visit www.BuyOwner.com and search thousands of listings for sale by owner. You don’t need to make a commitment to anyone else, or pay anyone else to help you search. You just search in your leisure, and you take the next step when you’re ready.

To help you find exactly what you want in a new home, you can use the Advanced Search option. This allows you to search for a specific price range, a particular type of property style (such as a single-family home or a condominium), certain features you want included with the house like a pool or a garage and so much more!

As you are browsing, you can also use the Housefly tool to see what properties other visitors are viewing. Is the house you like getting a lot of views? Are there other popular properties that catch your attention?

Once you’re ready to commit to the process of buying a new home, Buy Owner can help you receive a loan through our mortgage partner. Sales representatives and customer service staff will also be available to help answer any questions you may have during the process.

To help answer the questions that new or experienced homebuyers might have during the buying process, Buy Owner provides loads of blog articles to fill you in on the current market and what you should know as a homebuyer.

Make 2010 a successful year by using Buy Owner to find your new home! Then, next New Year’s, you’ll be making resolutions from the comfort of your new home.

1. Money. Because there are no commissions to be paid, there’s more money going in your pocket, not to a broker.
2. Motivation. Rather than being one in a long list of clients an agent represents, your home will be marketed by you, the one person most motivated to see it sell!
3. Better Pricing. Because you don’t need to factor in extra money for commissions, you have more flexibility to price your home competitively.
4. Your Knowledge. You know your home best, having lived there and installed updates, maintained features, etc.
5. Your Experience. Having lived in your neighborhood, you know it better than anyone! Who else can talk from first-hand experience about the schools, the shopping, the area’s amenities?
6. Control. You choose the marketing, you choose the photos, you choose the descriptions and features. When you are selling your home on your own, you have complete control over all the advertising.
7. Convenience. Because you already live in your home, it makes sense for you to be the one to show it to buyers.
8. Peace of Mind. When you handle the sale of your home, there’s no need to worry about what your agent is saying or how the buyers are responding. You’ll be part of the transaction, and you’ll have the comfort of knowing everything that’s going on.

Happy New Year from Buy Owner®! A new year means a fresh start: a chance to begin again and do things differently. Are you selling a home? What will you do to market your home more effectively? This new year is the perfect opportunity to put a few key marketing choices into play.

If your home is priced right and staged right, there’s only one factor left to focus on, and it’s an important one: advertising. Through BuyOwner.com, you have the opportunity to market your for-sale property to millions of viewers around the world. Meet with a Buy Owner marketing professional to hand-select length of text, amount of professional photographs/virtual tours, placement in BuyOwner.com search results and more. You can also check out these Buy Owner Blog articles for more information on making the most of Buy Owner advertising: “The Value of Virtual Tours”, “Why Descriptions Matter”, “The Secret to Selling Buy Owner”, Extra Tricks for Drawing Buyers.

Follow these tips, and you’re sure to see your home sold. After all, it’s 2009, a new year for you to make the most of!

Congratulations! If you’re considering buying a new home, now is a fantastic time to do it! Choosing to invest in the American Dream is an exciting decision, but, as you probably know, it’s also a big responsibility. In fact, for most people, purchasing a home will be the single largest investment they’ll ever make. That’s why it’s critically important to know a little bit about what you’re doing before you get started.

First things first: Where are you going to get the money to buy a new home? Saving up for a house down-payment can seem daunting, but with some savvy planning, it’s possible. In order to know the goal you’re working towards, though, you need to know what price range you’re looking at.

Take a look at this article for tips on shopping for a new home. Even when you’re not quite ready to move, narrowing down the location and type of home you’re wanting will allow you to compare prices better. Then you can come up with a price range for your target down-payment goal. Most experts agree you should be prepared to put down 20% of a home’s selling price when you purchase it. The more you can put down, the less you need to borrow (and pay interest on), so it makes sense to save up.

OK, so you know how much money you need. How can you save up?

Take a look at how much you already have saved compared to your goal amount. Then, it’s time to reevaluate your spending habits and see what you can do to accelerate savings.

Here are some ideas for savvy savings:

Cut back on unnecessary purchases: After you pay for the basics (rent, other bills, insurance, food, transportation, etc.), where does your money go? If you’re like most Americans, it goes towards little luxuries like eating out, magazine subscriptions, entertainment, new clothes, coffee, etc. Evaluate what things are needed and what things could be cut down. Remember, the decision to buy a home is a big one, and it may require sacrificing short-term pleasures in pursuit of long-term ones.

Look for additional sources of income: Beyond cutting your expenses, finding ways to increase your cash inflow is the best way to put away more money into savings. Brainstorm to see what additional income sources you can come up with!

Use all the information above to create a plan that works for you, and you should be able to estimate a timeline of savings, knowing approximately when you’ll be ready to purchase.

Here at Buy Owner, we’ve been shouting Buyers’ Market! for quite a while, and that’s never been more true than now. With mortgage rates set to improve and a wealth of for-sale homes on the market, you as a buyer stand to reap the benefits, giving you the home you’ve been searching for at a fair price, now more than ever.

If you’re in the market, here’s why you should buy… now!

1. Available Homes: More homes on the market means more homes to choose from. Looking for a large lot? Water views? A move-in-ready townhome? Whatever your dream, it’s out there. This is in stark contrast to the market of a few years ago, where buyers often fought bidding wars to grab up the right place.

2. Reduced Prices: Houses listed for $XX six months ago are often 75% of that now. In other words, it’s a 25% off (give or take) sale, and you get your pick of properties. Of course, if you’re selling your current home to buy a nicer one, this also means your property’s selling price may need to lower, as well. That makes now a smart time to act.

3. Bargaining Power: From making an offer to asking for assistance with closing costs, you’ve got opportunities to make the home sale what you want it to be. Be sure to get an inspection and talk with the seller about any defects. Most reasonable sellers will try to work with you and come to a reasonable conclusion.

If the above factors don’t entice you into the real estate market now, maybe this recent article we featured will. The truth is, now is an excellent time to buy, so start searching!

About the BuyOwner.com Blog

Founded in 1984, BuyOwner.com® is the leading provider of real estate marketing services. We pioneered the "For Sale by Owner" (FSBO) market, which today represents over 20 percent of all residential real estate transactions.